


the girl can't help it

by youremyqueen



Category: SKAM (TV)
Genre: Coming Out, F/F, Friendship, Post-Season/Series 02, Unrequited Crush
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-07
Updated: 2017-02-07
Packaged: 2018-09-22 17:30:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9617966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youremyqueen/pseuds/youremyqueen
Summary: Four girls Vilde kisses and one she doesn't.





	

**Author's Note:**

> ok, well i wrote this in maybe november, but didn't go back & edit it until now. all misrepresentations of norwegian culture are mine, and if you see anything or any phrasing that seems overly american or just unlikely in the context, please let me know.
> 
> sana/vilde is my ship! my girls! but i wanted to write something that still respected sana's religion, identity, and canon choices, so mostly this is just an exploration of vilde's sexuality. hopefully somebody will enjoy it!

**i.**

 

Eva is a sloppy drunk and she only gets sloppier once Noora leaves town. Vilde tells her so, without knowing why or what it’s going to help, over coffee and corn flakes the morning after the start of term party. The place is trashed, unfinished drinks and cigarette butts sitting undisturbed, portrait-like, in the cold light of the autumn noon. Vilde is sorting the bottles from the cans, nervously and unnecessarily peeling off their plastic labels, and trying to keep the severity of her tone in check.

“You have to get control of yourself. Noora isn’t here anymore to take care of you, and I certainly can’t do it. I’m not her, you know? Maybe I’d like to be, but I’m not, and I don’t have the saint-like patience. I have things of my own to do at parties.”

Eva’s spoon clinks in her mug as she stirs in cream. “Who says I need someone to take care of me?”

“Well, if no one does, you won’t wake up so happily in the morning. Who held your hair back last night while you were sick in the toilet?”

Vilde takes the cream carton from her as soon as she’s done and puts it away, leaving a spot of condensation on the counter.

“I don’t remember.” Eva sniffs. “I assume it was you, since you’re making a point about it.” Unlike Noora or Sana, Eva doesn’t call her out, doesn’t argue the validity of what she is trying to say. She just accepts things; that is her way. “Look, I miss her, too, okay? But she’s living her life, and we’ve got to be happy for her.”

Vilde swallows. She knows that she isn’t being fair, hasn’t been fair. She’s got too much resentment in her, and not enough gratitude.

“Just eat your breakfast, okay?” she says, in a small, apologetic voice. “Eat and you’ll feel better.”

Eva grunts, but doesn’t press it—that is also her way—picking up her spoon but still not using it for its intended purpose. She stirs the milk, listens to the cereal crackle, the fingers of her other hand sliding down her phone screen, scrolling through her Instagram feed without pausing long enough to get a good look at any one post.

“Hurry up,” Vilde presses, “or it will go soggy.”

“I like it soggy.”

Vilde wrinkles her nose, tries to laugh off the stilted hangover blues that have caught them this morning, but it’s like a moment between moments, a day between days. The roaring thrill of the previous night and its drunken ecstasy of utter self-assurance feels cartoonish in the light of day. Every time Vilde thinks she is getting closer to the person she wants to be, she reverts to this: shrill, insensible, unkind. Noora had kept her sensible. Noora had made her feel safe.

She puts everything in the recycling bins, wipes down the counters, sweeps the floor, lights a lavender scented candle, and takes out the trash. Eva has by now given up on telling her not to bother, to leave it. Enough parties have been thrown, enough ugly mornings-after punctuated by Vilde’s scatter-brained domesticity, her insistence on scrubbing this and washing that, keeping good house. That’s what a boy wants in a girl, and even now that she has dispensed with such ideas and made a point of pursuing only what she wants in herself, it is hard to come up with anything original. It is hard to sit still.

Eva watches her from where she is sat in sweatpants and a towel wrap, face clean of make-up, eyes tired, eyes following her.

“Vilde,” she says, and the cautious smile in her voice reveals what she is going to say before she says it, “did we kiss last night?”

“Hmm?” Vilde says, wiping the counter again just to have somewhere to look.

“Did we kiss again? I definitely kissed a girl last night. I remember the smell of her perfume.” She leans forward, gives a dramatized sniff, and even though Vilde has since showered, her fingers still instinctively go to the dip of her collarbone, just above her throat, where the cool spritz of her Givenchy had last night mixed with pooling sweat as she’d squirmed in Eva’s lap, laughing against her mouth.

“You kissed everybody last night,” Vilde says, to skew the conversation away from the insignificant matter of what she may or may not done with her lips. “This is exactly what I’m talking about, Eva. I’m not,”—she’s practiced the word, she’d learned it from Noora—“slut-shaming you, but it’s just that if you can’t even remember—do you really like that?”

Eva blinks. “Well, I did until you started lecturing me about it.”

“I’m not lecturing, I’m,”—

“Anyway,” Eva continues, her voice coming louder and more sure, “you still haven’t said whether we kissed.”

Vilde opens her mouth, closes it again, lips pressing together. “I don’t remember.”

“You don’t remember? You just shamed me for not remembering.” Eva’s looking at her like she already knows the answer, already knows exactly what Vilde is afraid of, her lips quirking with good-humored understanding, and Vilde tries not to think of her hands on the edge of her skirt, warm vodka breath, soft and imploring, or the cradle of her hips, jut of her hipbones; what she’d wanted or where she’d wanted it.

To get drunk and kiss girls is one thing. To think about kissing girls even while sober is another, and one which she has no clear idea of how to approach.

“I told you, I wasn’t shaming you. I was only saying—if Noora were here, she’d,”—she’d tell Vilde to be honest, but how does she say something to Eva that she herself doesn’t even want to hear? She takes a long, full breath. “We have to learn how to take better care of ourselves, and each other.”

That sounds good, doesn’t it? That’s something a good person would say. Vilde is trying to be a good person. Eva’s studying her, phone screen gone dark, lips parted as if she’s about to speak, but then there’s a loud buzz from down the hall and Vilde says, “Oh, laundry!” and has an excuse to leave the room.

“You did laundry?” Eva calls after her, sounding minorly bewildered and a little bit impressed.

“I told you,” Vilde says over her shoulder, “you threw up.”

 

—

 

“You’re not giving the rest of us enough credit,” Sana says, without looking up from her books, pen poised against the last knuckle of her middle finger. Sana is the stillest person Vilde knows. She never fidgets, doesn’t gesticulate or speak animatedly, though at times her brow pulls her expression to extremes. She is always composed, even in anger, and never says anything that could just as well go unsaid.

“How so?” Vilde frowns, eraser tapping against her lower lip. She can hear the whine in her voice, tells herself that is more kittenish than petulant. “I shower you all in compliments every day. I let Eva borrow my cashmere sweater and she spilled hot sauce on it and I forgave her.”

Sana blinks at her. “That’s irrelevant.”

“I think it’s relevant.” Vilde erases what she’s just written, frowns, then writes it in again.

Sana sets down her pen. “Noora wasn’t our mother. Even if we miss her, we’re okay without her.”

“I,”—Vilde begins. “Have you and Eva been talking behind my back?”

“It’s not behind your back if I’m bringing it up to you right now.” Somewhere across the schoolyard, a crowd breaks into laughter. Vilde shifts in her seat to see if anything is going on. Sana doesn’t twitch. “If you feel like you can’t take care of yourself without Noora around, that’s you. Don’t try to project it onto Eva.”

Vilde purses her lips. Her nail polish is chipping on the little finger of her left hand, flakes of lavender paint falling onto her homework. “I’m not projecting anything. _I’m_ fine. It’s you all I worry about.”

“All of us?” Sana asks, with no room to mistake her meaning.

“Well, not you, maybe. But Chris, Chris is glued to Kasper, absolutely inseparable. Is this middle school? And Eva, she is definitely not handling it well. She made out with Jonas at the party this weekend, and with—a lot of. Different people.”

“Like you?”

Vilde feels a flush creeping up her neck. “You heard?”

“I saw. I was on the arm chair next to you two, but I suppose you were too drunk to notice. I watched you climb into her lap.” Sana is expressionless, toneless, it is impossible to tell if she approves or not.

For some reason, Sana’s approval is important to Vilde, a mark that she is doing well. Shifting in her seat, she mumbles, “You would understand if you drank.”

Sana’s brow tightens. “What makes you think I don’t already understand?”

Vilde doesn’t quite know how to parse that, and she’s not sure how to speak without digging a hole and climbing in it when it comes to these sort of things. Everything she had been raised to understand about Islam, either explicitly or tacitly, has been proven false or at least misrepresentative by knowing Sana, and so everything Vilde tries to say regarding it comes out wrong, and she doesn’t like how Sana looks at her when that happens.

She wets her lips. “I just—don’t you, you know, frown upon,”—she throws up loose air quotes, and even says it in English, trying to make it easier to laugh off—“ _sexual promiscuity_.”

Sana’s forehead creases up, and she shakes her head minutely, the way she always does at Vilde, the way that is a small, sure sign that Vilde is doing something wrong. “I’m not judging you, if that’s what you think. You think I’m friends with you all just so I can judge you?”

“No,” Vilde says, quietly.

“I make my choices for myself. I have no right or interest in telling you what you can and can’t do. So, don’t feel like you can’t talk to me about this, for fear of what I’ll think, okay?”

Small nod, small smile. “Okay.”

Sana adds, with the corner of her mouth twitching up, “As long as you stay out of my lap.”

Vilde wrinkles up her nose in a laugh, and this is the good feeling, the _you’ve done something right_ feeling, the reward for listening. Laughing with Sana like this makes her feel safe and settled inside. “I will try my hardest to resist,” she says, hand to heart, eyelashes fluttering.

They go back to homework, Sana writing with quick precision, Vilde constantly adjusting her seat, reorganizing her pencils, examining her nails, writing an answer and then second guessing it. She says, opening her pencil case to get out her sharpener—how can she think when the pencil tip is so dull?—“Noora used to pack me lunches, sometimes. On days when I didn’t eat.”

Sana looks up, looks at her directly, and doesn’t laugh her off. That’s nice of her. “So learn to pack your own lunches,” she says. “Call Noora, ask for recipes. You don’t need anyone to take care of you, Vilde.”

“I know that,” Vilde says, but her voice comes too quiet. “I was just saying, that was nice of her.”

“Yeah.” Sana nods. “It was.”

 

—

 

The next day Vilde opens her locker to find a small package of sweet bread and a note that says, _Sahtein!_ in Sana’s neat handwriting.

 

 

**ii.**

 

Vilde means to call Noora. She even puts it in her journal, but she only ever opens that up to make plans, not to remind herself what she has planned. It fades out quick, and there are parties to go to, events to join. If she brings lunch then she brings lunch, and if she doesn’t then she doesn’t. No big fuss.

And if she is in the upstairs bathroom of who-knows-who’s house and Sara from class 2B is grabbing her tits and kissing her neck and she is liking it, then that too is just how it is.

The thing is that if Vilde were wasted than this would make sense and would not need to be thought of, and even if she were adequately drunk it would be okay, but she is barely edging buzzed, had only been here for half an hour when Sara had stumbled into her in the hallway and grabbed her by the face and kissed her. She can tell from Sara’s breath and blur of her eyes that she is not half as sober, and maybe she is a bad person, maybe she is taking advantage, but it is not her who had shoved Sara into the bathroom and closed the door behind them, not her who is pinching Sara’s nipple, nor her who—

Oh, well, yes it _is_ her who is breathing so hard that it’s audible, and it is her with the uncomfortable heat between her thighs, and it is definitely her who pulls Sara up from her neck to kiss her mouth again, lips chapped, teeth nibbling, hips pressing up, legs pulling her in.

There’s a crash and a burst of laughter and Vilde pulls away so fast that Sara falls forward against the sink as at least four people crowd in with a bong, boys from another school, oohing and whistling.

“Hey, why’d you stop?” one of them asks.

Vilde stands quickly, shoving down her skirt and grabbing Sara by the wrist to pull her out of the bathroom with her, not because she wants to continue elsewhere, but because she is not so bad of a feminist to just leave Sara there, drunk and surrounded by slurring assholes. She deposits her in the living room with Ingrid instead, whose laid on the couch with some guy and a bottle of wine, and goes for the front door.

Sana is always easy to spot, wherever they are, and when Vilde sees her, black-clad and humorless in the foyer, she tries to turn around quickly, without being seen, but she has barely gone two steps when she hears her name. Turning around, she paints on a wide smile and pretends that she hadn’t been trying to avoid her.

“Sana!” she says, false and high-pitched. “Uh, what are you doing with two drinks? You’re not even supposed to have one drink.”

Clenching a solo cup in each hand, Sana rolls her eyes.

“I’m holding them for Chris.”

“Chris has two drinks?”

“One is Kaspar’s. They’ve gone up to one of bedrooms, probably to fuck, and I am, as usual, left standing around like an asshole.” She doesn’t look as pissed off as she could, simmering with the usual general distaste.

It’s a peculiarity of Sana’s that she is always so eager to go to parties, despite every one inevitably ending with her picking someone up, getting someone home, wiping puke off of someone’s face, or taking someone’s phone before they send an ill-advised snapchat. Noora never drank, but Noora also hated parties and did her best to avoid them. Sana loves them, even though they don’t love her back.

“You are too good, Sana,” Vilde says, with a softness that almost gets lost within the din.

Sana blinks twice, a bit caught off guard. “I’m as good as I need to be.”

From the stairwell, someone gives a particularly loud shout of laughter, and Vilde recognizes two of the guys who had walked in on Sara and her in the bathroom. Ducking toward the door while trying to look as if she isn’t in any hurry, she grabs the cups in Sana’s hands, warm fingers brushing her cool ones, and says, “Let’s go outside. Leave these. They’ll fall asleep up there, probably.”

Sana follows without arguing, even though the quirk of her expression suggests that she isn’t falling for anything, and Vilde appreciates that more than she knows how to say. The trust between them is implicit, goes unsaid, but it thrums somewhere below the throat.

It’s still autumn but the nights are viciously cold. Vilde can see her breath in front of her as she steps outside, Sana’s beside her. There are a few people smoking on the porch, two girls and a boy that Vilde doesn’t know, from the first year maybe, with their sleeves pulled over their hands and their jackets zipped up to their chins. Sana’s covered from head to toe, but Vilde’s skirt barely reaches mid-thigh, and she’d decided, after deliberating for forty minutes in front of the mirror, that the outfit had worked better without stockings.

They sit down on the opposite end of the porch from the other group, underneath a light that elongates the shadows on Sana’s face, deepening her eyes, sharpening her nose. She’s pretty. Vilde is going to say, _“You look pretty,”_ but she’s hardly opened her mouth when Sana says, “You’ve got lipstick on your neck.”

Vilde’s hand goes automatically to the patch of skin where she can feel the bruise forming, raw and warm, and it comes away with pink smudges on it. “I’m not,”—she starts, somewhat panicked.

“A lesbian, sure. I didn’t say to.” Sana doesn’t bat a lash. “Boys can wear lipstick, after all.”

Vilde scoffs, looking down, feeling shaky and slightly sick from all the beers she didn’t have. “Not if they want to kiss me.” She wipes her hands together to get rid of the waxy feel of the lipstick.

“That’s awfully closed minded.”

“It’s not,” she protests. “Just because I won’t kiss somebody doesn’t mean I think they’re wrong, or bad.”

Sana smiles ironically. “And just because somebody is wrong or bad, it doesn’t mean you won’t kiss them, right? It follows logically.”

Sana polices her, holds her accountable for everything she says, dumb things she doesn’t mean but which fit the flow of conversation, or just sound like her. There is a look she has, dead-eyed and rigid, which, when employed, suggests that she will like Vilde less if whatever she’s said is what she really thinks, who she really is. Vilde has yet to find a conviction within herself that cannot be undone by this look.

“Yes,” she says, then, “wait, no? Ugh, you’re too cruel to me Sana, really.” She’s laughing, though. Her insides have not cooled off, the low burn between her thighs still lit, and further up, in the area of the heart, there is something else, a bright thing that she had forgotten about until just now.

Sana laughs with her and it only gets brighter.

“The bread was good,” Vilde says, abruptly, because she wants to drag out this feeling for as long as she can.

Sana nods soberly, with a small, good-hearted smile. “I’ll tell my uncle. It’s his recipe.”

From the other end of the porch, tinny automated voices sound. Somebody on their Snapchat, somebody at a party somewhere else making a lot of noise at this party here.

Vilde hugs her knees to her chest and waits for the noise to pass. “I thought you said I should learn to take care of myself, though?”

“You should. But that doesn’t mean that no one else can ever do anything nice for you, does it?” As she says this, coincidentally or—more likely—not, Sana unwraps the scarf from her neck, the thick woolen one that she wears lower than her hijab, and puts it over Vilde’s shoulders.

“Does it?” Vilde asks. “I don’t know. Ah—thank you.”

She wraps the scarf around her arms, she’s very careful with it. She doesn’t want to get it dirty, or pull the wool. She rubs at her neck compulsively, looking at the shining toes of her black boots and the way they reflect the porch light.

“Was it Eva again?” Sana asks, after a time.

“What? Oh, no. It was Sara, from our year.” She keeps rubbing at the spot. She’s starting to think that Sara had sucked too hard, that it will be days before it fades and that she’ll need to wear turtlenecks for the next week.

“She’s cute,” Sana says. “Not as cute as Eva, though.”

Vilde’s eyes flick up just in time to see the small grin disguising itself behind Sana’s dead-pan mask. “Are you critiquing my tastes? Ha! I suppose you constantly disapprove of my taste in boys, so it makes sense that it applies to both genders.”

Sana cannot hide her grin now. “I’m just looking out for my friend,” she says, hand coming up to pat Vilde on the back, not exactly at, but close enough to, the spot where all good things swell within her.

It’s cold as hell, but they stay out there together for a long time, and Vilde remembers it as being a very good party all around.

 

**iii.**

 

Noora comes home and Vilde pretends to be very upset that things have not worked out for her. She does want the best for Noora, and she does want her to be with William, but she would like them to be _here_ in Oslo, and she tries not to feel anything of the sort, because it is small and selfish and not consistent with the person she is trying to be, but it is so nice to have her home.

They have a girls night, all five of them together—even Chris makes it off of Kaspar for a night—with wine bottles scattered about the room, slow dizzy music, fives voices talking over one another; home at last. That was Friday.

Now it is Tuesday, and it’s tortilla night. It is just Vilde and Noora.

Eskild is out, which is unfortunate, and Linn is locked in her room, which is more fortunate, as she is a painful bore, and Isak’s location is unconfirmed and irrelevant. He’d refuse to join them, anyway. They chop vegetables together and beat eggs and talk about things without actually explicitly saying them, like how Noora has been eating since leaving London, how Vilde has been exercising, and is she over-exercising? Does she get enough protein? And it is too hard to say anything about disorders or self-harm out loud, and sounds awfully cheesy, like an outdated film shown in health class, but to have the subject there between them, allowed, not judged, not shameful—it’s very nice.

They get on the subject of boys, of course, inevitably. After they have eaten Noora lies back on the sofa and Vilde braids and unbraids her hair as the TV speaks to itself in a very soft voice.

“William is an idiot,” Vilde says. “Didn’t you tell me that once?”

“Yes,” Noora says with a sigh, “but then he proved me wrong.”

“And now he’s proven you right again. I’m don’t mean that he’s a bad person, or that you shouldn’t love him. All I’m saying is that if he’s not treating you well, that’s his problem, his issue. It’s got nothing to do with you, and nothing _you_ do or change will solve the problem. So don’t beat yourself up. You deserve to be treated well, and anyone who doesn’t realize that isn’t good enough for you.” Vilde speaks with an authority she doesn’t feel.

Noora sits up, looking at her with a strange clarity, perhaps wondering at the irony of hearing her own words come out of Vilde’s mouth with a level of pep that she’d never afforded them herself.

“Thank you, Vilde,” she says after a moment, a soft smile lighting up her face.

“I know there’s a difference between knowing it and feeling it,” Vilde continues, keeping to the lines she practiced on the way over, “that it doesn’t make your heart hurt any less, but,”—

“No, really, thank you. I’m glad to have you as friend.” Noora is warm and soft, fluttering white light and the clean cotton scent of laundry fresh from the dryer, and all this and more makes the blood rush to Vilde’s cheeks when Noora kisses her softly on the side of the head. It’s chaste and almost weightless, something done in utter and complete friendship, but Vilde’s skin tingles anyway because of everything it suggests, makes unavoidable.

When Noora pulls back she frowns at the look Vilde is giving her. “What?”

“Can I ask you something?” Vilde says, looking down at her hands. On the TV, a man in a suit discusses record snowfall in Troms ø for this time of year. When she glances up, the earnest interest in Noora’s expression bulks up her confidence a bit, and she just comes out—so to speak—with it. “When I asked if you were a lesbian, and you said no,”—

“Vilde,” Noora begins, but Vilde shakes her head.

“No, listen. When you said no, were you saying no because you really knew that it was a no, or were you not really sure, but it’s a lot less fuss to just say no and not think about it?” She talks too fast, rushing it all out at once.

Noora’s smile doesn’t shrink. “Vilde, are you,”—

“Not a lesbian! I like boys.”

“But not just boys?”

Vilde makes several faces before she decides on the one she wants to wear in response to this question, and the silence that leaves is itself answer enough. Her nerves are overcome by humor, her humor by fear, her fear by hope that maybe this is not such a big deal, maybe no one will care. But what if it’s not even true? What if she’s just trying to draw attention to herself, as always? What if they’re just drunken flukes?

“I don’t know,” she says weakly, with a little shrug, a step back from the confession she’d been trying to make.

“There’s plenty of things in between,” Noora says, putting a hand on her arm.

“Then yes, I think maybe I’m one of those things. Bi,” she tests, titling her head sideways, trying to own it, to brand it, “I’m bi, maybe.”

The look Noora gives her borders on motherly. “I think it’s really cool and mature of you to talk about this openly and honestly with me. Have you told anyone else?”

“I—Sana. Sana knows. I’m not sure if Eva knows. We kiss a lot at parties but I don’t know if she feels the same way about it as I do.” Vilde can’t stop folding and unfolding her hands. Her knuckles are dry, she needs moisturizer, she needs a glass of water.

“Do you,” Noora says, eyes squinting a little, a cute face, a face Vilde knows, “like, _lik_ e Eva?”

Vilde gives a little jolt of laughter, eyebrows jumping up. “Ha! No. I mean, she’s very beautiful, of course. You’re very beautiful. Chris is beautiful. All my friends are beautiful.” If she leaves out Sana’s name, she pretends to herself that it means nothing. “I just think that maybe it’s a thrill for her, but she doesn’t think about it, like—she doesn’t think about girls, otherwise.” Vilde shrugs.

“What kind of girls do you think about?” Noora asks, slyly, lips scrunching in a fond smile. Vilde feels safer than she thought she would.

“Huh?” She laughs. “That’s personal.”

“You always talk about your kind of man.”

“It’s different.”

“It shouldn’t be.”

“I know it shouldn’t be,” Vilde says, and she hopes that Noora sees that she means it, that she’s taking it seriously, that she’s really trying to be a better, healthier, more honest person.

The sweetness in Noora’s face suggests that she does see it, and as if to congratulate her, as if to make sure she knows that her hard work is not going ignored, she leans in and kisses Vilde on the cheek again, this time for longer, and with more intention.

Giggling, Vilde squirms. “That tickles. Your eyelashes.”

Noora pulls back. “You know, men actually have longer eyelashes than women.”

“So what? It doesn’t make it tickle any less.”

“I’m just saying.” Noora puts her hands up, as if in surrender, hair falling into her face as she laughs.

“I’m really glad you’re back,” Vilde says.

Noora tucks the strands behind her ear and bites the inside of her cheek. “I really am, too.”

 

**iv.**

 

The pleasure itself it almost outweighed by nerves, the way her feet cramp in their heels, the way she can’t seem to think of anything to say. The girl—Anne, 20 years old, in Oslo on holiday, brown hair, C cup—doesn’t seem particularly interested in any subject of conversation that Vilde brings up, either over chat or in person. She is attractive, she smells good, she dances well, but Vilde doesn’t think she is even someone she’d be friends with under different circumstances. Is it wrong of her to judge girls that way if she doesn’t do the same for boys? None of the crushes she’s ever had growing up were boys that she’d imagined laughing with, talking with, being listened to by. She’d just pictured what she would look like on a boy’s arm, and him on her’s, and how it would feel to—what, exactly? Be wanted, treasured, loved.

Anne doesn’t make her feel anything like that particularly, and she’s a dull case on top of it, but she redeems herself once they get back to her hotel room. She kisses better than Sara, better than Eva—it’s makes sense, she’s older, she knows things—and slips her hands up Vilde’s thighs, cupping her butt, running her fingers through her hair and pulling her close to breathe softly into her ear. In the bed she is not rough, but insistent, very sure of herself and where to put her hands. She knows how to do things that Vilde has never even thought of.

When she goes down on her, she does it without a second thought, without a flinch. Vilde has had orgasms, but not like this.

She slumps dizzy on the bed afterwards, warm through-out her whole body, as Anne kisses her cheek and tells her she’s so beautiful. It’s nice to hear, it’s nice to feel like this, but the intimacy of sex only goes so far, and when Vilde looks into her eyes she doesn’t particularly see anything that she’s seeking.

Maybe that’s okay. Her spine is tingling.

“You can stay over,” Anne offers, when Vilde is dressing, the room warmer than it had been, the collar of her shirt scratchy against her skin.

“I have school tomorrow,” she says, which is not a good excuse, as she searches for her other sock. “But text me, yeah?”

Anne gets her an Uber, and kisses her goodbye, but there is no suggestion on either side of an intention to keep in contact. The ride home is long, the city is dark blue, spattered with white and red lights. It’s a Wednesday, so downtown is not especially rowdy at this time of night, but there is music, the thick bass of it creeping in-between the windowpanes. Vilde feels nothing in particular. She is not ungrateful for the experience, but she hadn’t sated the right craving.

Pulling out her phone, she does something she knows she probably shouldn’t.

 

 **vilde** :

a girl made me come!

 

Sana reads it immediately, but it takes a moment for the (…) to appear, and when it does it stays for a long time, even though the reply she finally sends it short.

 

**sana:**

why are you telling me this?

**vilde:**

who else will I tell? 0:)

**sana:**

the girl?

 

It’s hard to answer that. It’s hard to put something so complicated down in a few words, without Sana’s expression to guide her, the rise and fall of her brows. She wants to see her. She wants to see somebody who she would stay the night with, even if there was school in the morning.

 

**vilde:**

i met up with her from tinder. her personality was only okay, but she was very good in bed!

 

No reply. Four minutes pass and Sana still doesn’t make a reply and there is no (…) indicating her intention to.

 

**vilde:**

are you jealous?

**vilde:**

i’m kidding! :P :P :P

 

She knows it’s a bad idea as soon as she sends it. Still no reply. She doesn’t know how to do this. This is not something she’s ever thought about doing, made up strategies for. William had been a project. Sana is just an idea that comes on strongly sometimes, an image of something nice that she can’t have but which would suit her. Perhaps William had been similar enough. Perhaps she only goes for the unattainable, that everything else is too immediate and real and demands too much from her.

Still no reply.

 

**vilde:**

will you teach me your uncle’s sweet bread recipe tomorrow? you can come over.

(…)

 **sana:** okay. after school?

 **vilde:** yes!!!

 

Sana must really love her, she thinks, to forgive her for all of these things all the time.

 

—

 

**v.**

 

Vilde’s parents will absolutely not let her have boys in her room, but girls, Sana notes aloud as they shut the door behind them, conveniently pass without scrutiny. They’d made a mess of the kitchen while baking, and even now that’s it’s clean again and the bread is cooling on the counter, Vilde’s got flour on her blouse and needs to change into something that doesn’t smell like cinnamon.

She considers modesty—what does it mean for one girl to undress in front of another girl when one of them is interested in girls? Anything?—but ultimately decides against it, and strips as she always would, pretending that an alternative hadn’t even crossed her mind. As she searches in her drawer for a new top and makes an effort not to wonder if Sana is watching her, she finds one of Chris’s old shirts that she’d borrowed and never returned, and feels a little bit hollow in the chest.

“I miss Chris,” she says, choosing something else, pale pink and flattering to her complexion, but taking the borrowed shirt out of the drawer and folding and refolding it, smoothing out all of the creases. “Do you miss Chris?”

Sana is, in fact, watching her with studied attention. “Of course. But I’m used to my friends disappearing for months when they get boyfriends.”

Vilde wonders, not for the first time, what a different world it must be for Sana in high school, watching all of these things take place around her, shaping the lives of other girls, when she has no interest in them, and no desire to participate. What must she do with her time if not obsess about dating? She studies, Vilde knows. She reads. She’s smart. Maybe that is how one becomes smart, by dispensing with frivolous distractions.

But frivolous distractions are all Vilde has or knows how to have.

“You have me still, at least,” she says after a moment. “I’m not likely to get a boyfriend anytime soon.”

“Girlfriends work the same.”

Vilde adjusts the way the shirt fits her in the mirror, so that it is as flattering as possible. For what audience? It’s just habit, she tells herself. “I’m even less likely to have one of those. Just because I like to hook-up with girls doesn’t mean I want to go and be in a relationship with one of them. Many of them just,”—she watches Sana’s profile in the mirror, her dark lipstick, the swoop of her nose, the precise swish of her eyeliner—“just aren’t my type.”

Sana’s not looking at her now, but at the pictures on her wall, polaroids mostly, the kind for which the film is expensive and that artsy girls take at parties. A few are older, on plain disposable camera film. Ballet recitals, field trips, school dances. Vilde very small with bangs and two short pigtails and a front tooth only half grown in, smiling wide in a birthday hat. Her and a date at a middle school formal, in matching shades of lilac. She remembers that year vividly. It’s when she’d first starting purging, before it had gotten really bad, when it had been an infrequent occurrence, instead of the mechanism by which she steered every day, controlled every insecurity.

Since she’s stopped doing it, she hasn’t felt like herself, and that has been—what? Relieving.

“What is your type?” Sana asks, still studying the pictures, expression soft.

When Noora had asked that it had seemed such an impossible question to navigate, but to defy Sana seems even more impossible, and there is something of a thrill in speaking to her about this.

Vilde shrugs, sitting down on her bed, and gives it some thought. “Smart and sensible, as well as pretty. Big boobs are a plus, but not a necessity. Not too similar to me, I guess, in body or personality. I’m not very attracted to myself, you know, so I wouldn’t want to be with somebody who was especially similar.”

That seems perfectly natural to Vilde, but Sana frowns. “Why aren’t you attracted to yourself?”

Vilde gives a stunted smile, and tilts her head. “Well, who is, really?”

Sana sits back down beside her, her weight rocking the mattress so slightly as to be hardly noticeable. “I’d date me. And not just because I’m my only option.”

That makes Vilde laugh, and when she says, “I’d date you, too,” she gives it no thought, really, truly, there are no deeper intentions, she is not _reaching_ for anything, trying to get any sort of reaction, “but unfortunately for me, you are taken by _Allah_.”

“Vilde.” The look Sana’s giving her mistakes nothing, and makes no allowances.

“What? Is that offensive? Sorry! You know I’m trying,”—

“If I were easily offended,” Sana says, and her face is right there, her heavy lips, that unrelenting look, “we wouldn’t be friends.” She knows, of course. Vilde cannot play dumb with her, even though dumb is Vilde’s signature move.

She sniffs and looks down at her hands.

“But we are friends,” Sana continues. “Good friends. And when you say things like that, it complicates the friendship.” She lifts her brows. “Do you understand what I mean?”

Vilde nods, even though it isn’t enough, it’s not half of what she wants to say, but it’s too hard to navigate, the hope and the certainty that the hope is baseless. She can feel whatever she wants, and go on feeling it, but what’s one girl’s feelings to a God?

“I knew being a lesbian was trouble,” she says, trying to laugh it off.

“I thought you weren’t?”

“Bisexual, whatever! It’s big trouble. Boys are so uncomplicated.” She’s not looking Sana in the face, but staring at the lipstick print on her mirror, pale pink, perfected. She’d wiped it off and redone half a dozen times. “William really hurt me last year, but nothing of importance was truly lost. I still had all of you.”

Sana’s looking at her like she’s really trying to see what’s there, and that makes her chest ache and her pulse pound. “You still have us,” she says.

“Yeah.” Vilde shrugs, tries not to be too pathetic, but it’s hard. Being strong is hard, honesty is unending self punishment. “Except Chris.” She tries to joke her way out of it, but Sana’s not having it.

“Chris will come around,” she says, fully serious. “She’ll cool off with Kaspar, or they’ll break up, or whatever. And then she will still have us, too, because as you said, that’s what friendship is. No matter what.”

And there are layers beneath that which Vilde cannot dissect, that she can’t even begin to touch, but what she hears fully and clearly is that Sana will not leave her, will not forget her, will not reject her, even if she does or says things as fully stupid as the things that she feels burning at the back of her throat. And that’s the whole problem, isn’t it? They will always be friends.

She swallows it down. She’s going to be strong. “Will you sleep over, Sana? I promise to keep my hands to myself.” Small smile, gentle, as open as possible.

“Oh, good,” Sana dead-pans, taking the easy way out of this very difficult conversation, because Vilde is giving it to her, Vilde is asking her to take it, “I was worried.” She shakes her head. She is too kind. “Of course I’ll stay over.”

 

—

 

They eat sweetbread, but not too much. Vilde used to overeat until she didn’t feel like herself, just for the pleasure of getting it out again, of being remade: small, perfect, beautiful. It was somebody’s ideal of beauty, anyway; she’s not sure whose. It looms from every direction, but she no longer lets it touch her. It’s not always easy, of course. Pain is most easily drowned out by habit. Positive change takes attention, immense concentration on yourself and on the people around you, the people you care about. It’s hard to look directly at yourself sometimes, let alone someone else, who will stare back and ask you what exactly you’re doing.

Sana doesn’t ask. Side by side in Vilde’s bed, with all the lights shut-off but the glare of their phone screens turning their faces a ghostly blue-white, she doesn’t even blink when Vilde hooks her pinkie finger through hers, and pulls it tight in a promise.

Sana doesn’t wince when, shutting off her phone and turning the other way, Vilde murmurs, “Love you.”

She is cold at times, but warm at just the right ones, and Vilde feels Sana’s fingertips against her shoulder, the softest, most necessary thing that has ever happened, as she replies, “Love you, too, Vilde,” and then shuts off her phone, too. She doesn’t, however, turn the other way, and if Vilde feels her breath tickling the back of her neck the whole time that she is trying to fall asleep, and if it kicks her heartbeat up in her chest, she doesn’t mention it, or complain.

She can stand a little self-sacrifice. That’s what friends are for.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! any & all comments are appreciated.


End file.
